Welfare State Change Research Articles

Beyond ideal and real types – methodological foundations of typologies in welfare state research

AbstractIn welfare state research, typologies are a frequently applied methodological tool for comparative analyses. They are used for a variety of purposes, such as case selection, for providing a birds-eye perspective on welfare states and their differences and to determine welfare state change. The methodological discussion in welfare state research on the use of typologies is, however, limited because it is centred around the question of whether Esping-Andersen’s (1990) work and other related studies present an ideal type or a real type approach. This is misleading, as both concepts are ambiguous, and there are more relevant aspects when it comes to the characterisation of typologies. Instead, this paper suggests to differentiate between typologies along the four dimensions of a typology’s theoretical foundation, the assessment of cases and the use of qualitative and quantitative attributes and methods. In an integrative literature review, a selection of typological studies of welfare state research is analysed against the background of the suggested classification. Among the studies analysed, assigning country cases to groups is most common what serves the heuristic purpose of these typologies. There are typologies with theoretical types and dimensions and with empirical types and theoretical dimensions, both with a variety of qualitative and/or quantitative attributes and methods. This uncovers the complexity of the typological approaches in welfare state research. In doing so, this paper attempts to simulate a thematically broader and methodologically deeper discussion on typologies in welfare state research.

Epistemic notions of trust and distrust in institutional encounters with forced migrants in Finland and Sweden

ABSTRACT This article examines epistemic notions of trust and distrust in institutional encounters from the perspective of forced migrants settling in the changing welfare states of Finland and Sweden. While there is an emerging body of research on the forms, antecedents and directions of trust among forced migrants, the epistemic notion of trust is still under-researched. This article draws on interviews with forced migrants settling in Finland and Sweden. The theoretical framework combines theoretical understandings of trust and epistemic interactions. In the analysis, I show how epistemic notions of trust and distrust, which entail being trusted or distrusted as a knower, emerge as central in understanding trust shaping in institutional encounters. The article illuminates the role of intermediators in epistemic trust and distrust trajectories, as trust-shaping processes also involve actors other than street-level bureaucrats. In addition, the article introduces the concept of epistemic scaffolding to show the importance of supporting service users with a forced migration background as knowers to be. Thus, the article contributes to scholarly discussions around the multifaceted and dynamic phenomenon of trust and its various directions among forced migrants in the context of institutional encounters in the Nordics.

The Continental Social Investment Turn: Sequencing Corrective and Transformative Welfare State Change in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy

The Continental Social Investment Turn: Sequencing Corrective and Transformative Welfare State Change in the Netherlands, Germany, and Italy

A computer vision approach to monitor activity in commercial broiler chickens using trajectory-based clustering analysis

To monitor changes in broiler behaviour related to animal health and welfare, farmers typically observe their flocks using manual observation. However, due to the labour intensive and continuous aspect of this task, the analysis of broiler behaviour could be automated using camera technology. This paper proposes a proof-of-concept camera surveillance system based on the automated detection and tracking of broilers to monitor activity bouts using unsupervised 2D trajectory clustering. Firstly, a convolutional neural network-based detector was trained and tested on our labelled dataset which resulted in a precision, recall and f score of 0.98, 0.90 and 0.94, respectively. Using a tracking-by-detection approach, the proposed system was able to track chickens across video frames with a multi-object tracking accuracy of 74.7%. A component-based feature saliency Gaussian mixture model (CFSGMM) was subsequently generated and applied to objectively cluster the trajectories based on their spatiotemporal information. Nineteen features were extracted from the trajectories, representing both static and dynamic characteristics of broiler movement, and three activity classes were identified: ‘least active/resting,’ ‘active’ and ‘highly-active.’ The proposed method was validated on one-minute monocular video sequences. CFSGMM was applied to cluster 2D trajectories relating to broiler activity bouts within the commercial rearing environment with an agreement ranging from 6.0 to 99.7% when compared to human observation. We demonstrate the potential of the computer vision system to monitor overt, short-term changes in broiler activity associated with on-farm events and discuss the opportunities of leveraging the technology to monitor longer term changes in welfare state. It is anticipated that further development of the detection and tracking systems will improve the performance of the trajectory clustering method.

The end of welfare states as we know them? A multidimensional perspective

AbstractThis article highlights the limitations of unidimensional analyses in the comparative welfare state literature and emphasises the need for a more holistic, multidimensional approach incorporating social spending, welfare state outputs and outcomes. To illustrate the utility of a multidimensional approach, we examine the long‐term welfare state trajectories of Sweden and Germany, prototypical social‐democratic and conservative welfare states, respectively, and compare them against the baseline of Europe's prototypical liberal welfare state, the United Kingdom. The social spending (expenditure) and output (generosity) allowed us to identify significant changes in the Swedish welfare state (i.e., retrenchment). The outcome dimension alerts us to a policy drift in the German Welfare State, as relatively stable public spending and welfare generosity until the first half of the 2000s were nonetheless associated with sharply increased inequality and poverty. Overall, our findings suggest that a holistic, multidimensional approach is necessary to fully understand the complexities of welfare state change and continuity, as focusing solely on one dimension can lead to analytical misjudgments. The sharp rise in inequality and poverty across countries raises doubts about whether policymakers and researchers rely too much on outdated assumptions of normality that fail to meet the welfare state realities of today.

The Repoliticization of the Welfare State. By Ian McManus. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2022. 234p. $80.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. - Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change: Democratic Linkage and Leadership under Pressure. By Staffan Kumlin and Achim Goerres. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 240p. $85.00 cloth.

The Repoliticization of the Welfare State. By Ian McManus. Ann Arbor: Michigan University Press, 2022. 234p. $80.00 cloth, $29.95 paper. - Election Campaigns and Welfare State Change: Democratic Linkage and Leadership under Pressure. By Staffan Kumlin and Achim Goerres. New York: Oxford University Press, 2022. 240p. $85.00 cloth.

New Dissertations

Stave Churches in the History of Knowledge, Sine Halkjelsvik Bjordal Dis/ability in the Changing Welfare State, Christine Bylund On the Challenges of Decoloniality in the Swedish Museum of Ethnography, Charlotte Engman Listening to the Radio in Sweden, Elin Franzén Women in Icelandic Folk Legends, Dagrún Ósk Jónsdóttir Phenomenological Reflections on Seafarers’ Experiences from the Era of Steamships, Ulla Kallberg Pilgrimage in Norway, Hannah Kristine Bjørke Lunde Life-Modes in a Changing World Order, Niels Jul Nielsen Affect in Online Hate Speech, Karin Sandell

Swedish unions and obligatory complementary income insurance: Securing unemployment benefits in a changing welfare state

AbstractUntil the 2000s, the Ghent system of state‐supported, union‐run funds contributed to high union density in Sweden. However, there has been a remodelling of the Ghent system and a gradual erosion of public unemployment insurance. In this new institutional and less universal context, unions have introduced the private complement known as obligatory complementary income insurance (OCII). This article seeks answers to how Swedish unions have thought and argued on OCII, how these thoughts and arguments change over time and whether there are differences across unions within different confederations. The material includes congressional minutes and other internal documents as well as newspapers and union magazines, 2000–2020. There is a myriad of arguments for and against OCII. Many unions highlight the eroded public unemployment insurance—arguably a threat both to individuals and collectives—as the prime trigger of OCII. Yet, for unions with high rates of unemployment and relatively high wages, the OCII premium may be too expensive. Further, some unions argue that high‐wage members are subsidised by low‐wage members. We also find that OCII enhances sharp competition between unions to keep and recruit new members. The material also reveals different union opinions on how OCII is affecting the future of the welfare model.

An illiberal welfare state emerging? Welfare efforts and trajectories under democratic backsliding in Hungary and Turkey

Mainstream western-centric welfare state research has mostly confined itself to studying social policy in consolidated democracies and tends to assume a synergy between democracy and the welfare state. This article shifts the focus to welfare states in countries with declining democratic institutions and rising right-wing populist rule to explore a complex relationship between (de)democratization and welfare state reforms. We conduct a comparative case study of two extreme cases of democratic decline, Turkey and Hungary. We employ a sequential mixed method approach. First, we assess welfare efforts in the two countries to understand which policy areas were prioritized and whether autocratizing governments retrenched or expanded their welfare states. In the second stage, we explore the trajectory of welfare reforms in Hungary and Turkey, focusing on three analytically distinguishable dimensions of social policy change: policy content, policy procedures (including timing, parliamentary procedures, veto players); and the discourses accompanying reforms. We find that democratic decline facilitates rapid welfare state change but it does not necessarily mean retrenchment. Instead we observe ambivalent processes of welfare state restructuring. Common themes emerging in both countries are the rise of flagship programmes that ensure electoral support, a transition towards top-down decision-making and the salient role of discourse in welfare governance. Overall, similarities are stronger in procedures and discourse than in the direction of reforms. Differences in spending levels and policy content do not suggest that the two cases constitute a coherent illiberal welfare state regime. Instead, we see the emergence of authoritarian features that modify their original welfare models.

Een narratieve analyse van maatwerk in de Wet maatschappelijke ondersteuning 2015. Conflicterende betekenissen van maatwerk

In this article we study the policy ideal of providing personalized public services which has gained considerable ground in recent years: both in the Netherlands and abroad.Personalization may be seen as an example of an ‘empty signifier’ (Laclau 1985): it is subject to diverse interpretations without making the distinctions explicit. As such, several policy objectives and interests can be covered without disagreeing about its overarching importance. It is therefore important to identify the different meanings given to personalization and determine the extent to which these can be reconciled. The case at hand is the Social Support Act (SSA) in the Netherlands which entails the open norm to provide tailored support. Policymakers presented this act as a remedy for numerous social problems, such as the fragmented provision of care and increased regulatory pressure.By conducting a narrative policy analysis of personalization in policy discourse, we identified four different narratives of personalization: personalization as market logic of matching supply and demand; personalization as professional discretionary room, personalization as the emphasizing of self-reliance and problem-solving abilities of the clients themselves and those around him, and lastly, personalization as the coordination of integrated care.These different meanings in policy discourse are not easily harmonized in daily practices. Based on recent empirical research on the existing bottlenecks in executing the SSA, we were able to identify key tensions between different narratives of personalization. For example, focusing primarily on activating one’s own problem-solving capacities is at the expense of professional room to adjust care to what the client needs. Integrated care has also lost its meaning due to the emphasis on empowerment and is mainly instrumental in obtaining a complete picture of the citizen and his network. These tensions create dilemmas for professionals, citizens and local policymakers. Moreover, in our case personalization provided the legitimacy for extensive public service reform in the changing welfare state, while political hang-ups, such as the associated cuts, could be circumvented. It is therefore of great importance that national policymakers and the legislator reflect on the complexities of personalization as a policy ideal and take into account the tensions between different meanings of personalization in practice.

Reliability of caretakers’ ratings of captive bottlenose dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and finless porpoises’ (Neophocaena asiaeorientalis sp.) behavioral style for welfare monitoring

ABSTRACT Qualitative ratings are increasingly used to assess animal welfare. We investigated the associations between daily caretakers’ ratings of individuals’ behavioral style, behavior during free time, participation during training sessions, and environmental variables in captive Yangtze finless porpoises, East-Asian finless porpoises, and bottlenose dolphins. Associations between caretakers’ ratings and behavior were found, including social swimming, fast swimming, play, interaction with humans, and agonistic and socio-sexual interactions. Ratings were also associated with participation during training sessions and food intake. Social separation, transport to a new pool, high visitors’ density, and holding of a sick conspecific were associated with ratings indicating a deteriorated human–animal relationship, a lower interest/fear of the environment, and/or a higher social cohesion depending on the group. Through principal component analyses, new variables that represented both caretakers’ ratings and behavior and that could be used for an easier interpretation of the data for welfare monitoring within each group were extracted. Caretaker ratings and behavior should be used as a complement to previously validated indicators to detect changes in welfare state and understand the potential causes of these changes.

The electoral consequences of welfare state changes: a sober look at theory and evidence

ABSTRACT The expectation that welfare retrenchment and expansion have electoral consequences for governing parties is widespread in welfare state research. Previous research either argues that welfare state change has electoral consequences across the board or that this is at least the case under certain conditions, such as a left party in government. In this study, we synthesize existing theoretical approaches into a stylized theoretical model and discuss why the assumptions underlying the electoral consequences argument may be questionable. We then conduct an empirical analysis of the electoral fates of government parties in 20 European countries. A wide range of statistical specifications provide practically no evidence for electoral consequences of welfare state changes even under favorable conditions. The importance of welfare changes for electoral outcomes may therefore be overstated.

The fundamental role of tax systems in the relationship between workfare and inequality in the lower half of the income distribution

In recent decades, many affluent democracies moved from traditional welfare states to workfare systems. Meanwhile, income inequality developed differently across countries, even when they made apparently similar shifts from welfare to workfare. It is a matter of debate why welfare state change had such heterogeneous consequences across countries. This article proposes that different incentives to take up low-wage work set by tax reforms in the wake of welfare-to-workfare transitions alter consequences on inequality in the lower half of the income distribution. To support this argument, we contrast the trends between the U.S. and Germany. The German and U.S. tax systems were used in very different ways to incentivize low-wage work. The U.S. provided strong incentives to take up low-wage, high-hour work through refundable tax credits. They act as in-work subsidies and represent an enormous public income support program. In contrast, in Germany, payroll taxes were reduced for marginal employment. These jobs were intended to serve as a stepping stone to full employment. Germany aimed to reduce barriers to labor market entry, but did not increase subsidies for those working higher hours in low-wage jobs. We hypothesize that the German path led to increased income inequality within the lower half of the income distribution, whereas the large U.S. tax-based subsidies in the U.S. significantly counteracted it. Decompositions of unconditional quantile regressions based on the SOEP and the CPS-ASEC for 1992 and 2014 strongly support these assumptions. Households with no labor market integration lost ground with the workfare reforms in both countries, increasing inequality in the lower half. However, U.S. households that conformed to the new workfare system by taking low-wage jobs received additional after-tax income through tax cuts and credits. This additional income of the beneficiary households increased the percentile values between the 10th and 30th percentiles by about 6 per cent, thus reducing income inequality in the lower half. Germany, on the contrary, lacked such compensatory subsidies for compliant households. Thus, increased take-up of low-wage work was associated with an increase in income inequality in the lower half. We conclude that tax systems are important in understanding why the shift towards workfare was associated with heterogeneous trends in income inequality across countries.

Integrative Elderly Care Model as a Part of a Changing Long-Term Care and Welfare State in Slovakia

The aim of this article is to describe and discuss the key challenges of social and healthcare services in Slovakia, focusing on the Integrative Elderly Care Model as part of a changing welfare state. It also examines the opportunities and challenges related to the transformation of community-based social and healthcare services. The Slovak welfare state has undergone several revisions during the last decade; so too has the elderly care sector, which is a combination of public and non-government organisations. Elderly citizens, however, remain in a precarious situation. The trend toward marketisation and re-familiarisation of elderly care ‘go towards the EU average’, indicating an increase in public social expenditure directed towards aging.

Welfare state change as a double movement: Four decades of retrenchment and expansion in compensatory and employment‐oriented policies across 21 high‐income countries

AbstractWe conceptualise and measure welfare state change across 21 high‐income countries as a continuum delineated by a double movement, that is, the combined change of compensatory and employment‐oriented policies. Our double movement framework readapts Polanyi's concept into the context of welfare state change. We analyse this double movement across four decades using Principal Component Analysis and a new indicator that compares spending in 2015 to maximum and minimum spending levels since the 1980. We contribute to the literature in three ways. First, we empirically document an overall change in spending for compensatory and employment‐oriented policies, with the latter becoming more prominent over time. This change is more pronounced in the 1990s and even more so in the 2000s, and partially reduced classic regime differences. The PCAs generate a Cartesian space where each country is positioned across time (the 1980s, the 1990s, the 2000s and the 2010s) and space (within four quadrants, i.e., ‘the strong employment‐oriented space’, ‘the weak employment‐oriented space’, ‘the strong compensatory space’, and ‘the weak compensatory space’). Second, we develop a fivefold taxonomy of welfare state change characterised by: (1) retrenchment in Canada, Germany, Ireland, Netherlands, Sweden and the United Kingdom; (2) abridged adaptation in Australia, Belgium, Finland, Norway, Spain and the United States; (3) minor expansionary adaptation in Greece, Italy, Japan, Portugal and Switzerland—where spending levels were low in the 1980; (4) adaptation with an equilibrium between the two movements in New Zealand and (5) strong expansionary adaptation in Austria, Denmark and France. Overall retrenchment and abridging adaptation prevail over expansionary adaptation—this is due to cutbacks of unemployment, family allowances and active labour market programmes not being counterbalanced by the expansion of childcare. Third, we critically interpret these changes, introducing the double movement concept into comparative social policy.

Political Trust and Policy Demand in Changing Welfare States: Building Normative Support and Easing Reform Acceptance?

AbstractHow does generalized political trust affect policy demand in changing welfare states? We simultaneously consider two possible effects. First, trust may buttress normative support, as measured by well-known items on general support for redistribution and ‘government responsibility’ in specific areas. Secondly, political trust may ease concrete reform acceptance in the context of fiscal pressure. This proposition becomes increasingly relevant as welfare states change in ways not directly addressed by traditional survey measures. We develop hypotheses about how different dimensions of normative support and reform acceptance may be unequally affected by political trust. We analyse primary three-wave panel data in a field dominated by cross-sectional analysis. The data offer standard measures of trust and support, and a new multidimensional question battery tapping reform acceptance. We find cross-sectional and longitudinal support for hypotheses predicting that political trust buttresses normative support for horizontally redistributive policies (but as hypothesized not for ‘life-course’ policies). In contrast, there is quite some cross-sectional but little longitudinal support for effects on reform acceptance. Possible exceptions involve some of the more contentious reform types and, in particular, reforms that raise user fees and taxation.

Veto Points Revisited: The Role of Party System Institutionalization in Welfare State Change

AbstractThis article argues that the impact of veto points on a government's policy outcomes depends crucially on the degree of institutionalization of the party system. Specifically, the article claims that two dimensions of party system institutionalization – stability of relations between parties and between parties and voters – condition the ability of the opposition to block governments' policy plans through veto points. It showcases this argument by applying the method of causal process tracing to a comparative analysis of health policy reforms in Slovakia (2002–2004) and Hungary (2006–2008).

Losers’ Consent in Changing Welfare States: Output Dissatisfaction, Experienced Voice and Political Distrust

Mature welfare states must increasingly handle growing fiscal pressures and a multitude of needs with smaller resources. Meanwhile, evaluations of policy outputs are characterized as ‘the weakest link’ in welfare state support, resulting in generalized political distrust. We assess the procedural fairness argument that citizens are not only concerned with welfare state outcomes but also assess the fairness of the processes of service delivery. The fairness perspective has usually been tested in cross-sectional studies, experiments or on the ‘input side’ of democracy. By contrast, we use primary three-wave panel data on evaluations and experiences with welfare state institutions. The random-effects within-between framework allows improved causal evidence that both outputs (service quality satisfaction) and procedural fairness (experienced voice opportunities) affect political trust. Crucially, however, perceived fairness mitigates detrimental effects of poor outcomes. This is because procedural voice matters, especially for the formation of political trust among losers.

An influential child of its time: Victim Support Sweden and the changing discourse on violence against women

ABSTRACT This article aims to describe and analyse the policy work by Sweden’s largest victim support organization – the Swedish Association for Victim Support (BOJ) – in the area of violence against women. The article is based on a study of BOJ’s national archive and interviews with key figures in the organization. We analysed the material within the context of contemporary governing political ideas in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, particularly concerning violence against women. We argue that BOJ is both a creation and a creator of its time. BOJ gained a position in a changing welfare state and has adhered to contemporary governing ideas over time. At the same time, BOJ has helped silence structural discourses around violence against women in relation to both class and gender by supporting the notion that considered abused women to be crime victims, and not as women first and foremost. Going forward, it is essential to ask whether defining abused women principally as ‘victims of crime’ is helpful or harmful. If we adjust how violence against women is perceived, the solutions will change.

The causes of welfare state expansion in democratic middle‐income countries: A literature review

AbstractThis article reviews the literature on the causes of welfare state expansion in democratic middle‐income countries across the Global South since the 2000s. After discussing challenges to measuring welfare state change, the article reviews research in political science and sociology and discusses nine potential causes of recent welfare state expansion, namely (a) economic development, (b) fiscal capacity, (c) democracy, (d) partisan ideology, (e) labour unions, (f) social mobilization, (g) cultural homogeneity, (h) institutional architecture, as well as (i) welfare rights and norms. The review thus reveals that recent welfare state expansion in democratic middle‐income countries has been driven by a similar set of causes as post‐war welfare state expansion in the Global North. The pronounced expansion of non‐contributory social policies has, in some contrast, also been characterized by more bipartisan and transnational political dynamics. The article concludes by outlining avenues for future research and by calling for more scholarly attention to the consolidation and testing of existing theories.